anyway HID is better

 

Then why is the EU moving away from it? HIDs are brighter, but that does not gurantee a better night vision that is safe for you and others on the road.

If the upgrade, is not both safe and legal, then its not really an upgrade is it? Not trying to be a jerk, just calling it like it is. The stock headlights are capable of a lot more output than you typically get. Good bulbs and a wiring harness, along with keeping the lenses clear, and you are set. Silverstars are NOT an upgrade, they are about 15% dimmer than Xtravision, and numerous people praise the GE Nighthawks. The Silverstars take an advantage of an optical illusion, that if you remove some yellow light and give a bluish tine, that they eyes will perceive an increase in brightness, even if its dimmer. This is why we use bluing in our laundry, do you actually think that staining the clothes slightly blue makes them whiter? No, but our eyes will perceive that to be the case.

 

Been there, done that, a couple times. Once on a dark and stormy night on the highway, when the headlights cut out due to the light switch overheating. Another time on a steep and winding mountain road when the headlights cut out due to the light switch overheating. Fortunately I had auxiliary fog lights on at that time, or I would have ended up at the bottom of a cliff. These were my motivations for installing relays to switch the lights.

Any kind of aftermarket lights that claim to be higher output will use more power, and therefore will present a greater load on the stock wiring harness and switch, which are marginal to begin with. In the stormy night lights-out, I was using the low beams and fog lights that were on my Mustang. In the mountain run, I was using Sylvania Xtravision sealed beams in my Aerostar. The Mustang's wiring was just badly designed, and the higher power of the Xtravision just overloaded the stock light switch.

So for just about anyone who plans to use their high beams for any extended amount of time, I strongly recommend installing relays. If you install higher power lights, it's a requirement, for safety's sake.

 

A well designed HID light will provide better illumination than a well designed halogen light. The only way to change the spectral emission of the halogen light is to change its burn temperature. There are many ways change the spectral emission of an HID light, and I'm a little surprised that so many manufacturers are still going for that blue/purple look. I have the 4300K version of HID lights on my Mustang now, and it provides excellent illumination. It's far better than the stock lights that it came with. It looks like a very bright halogen light; its spectral response is much closer to what humans expect from headlights than any of the blue/purple lights that come on those fancy German cars.

One of the features found on the precision optics used in HID lights work against it in the real world. They have a very sharp horizontal cut-off to prevent flashing on-coming drivers. Just below that cut-off is also where a lot of light is delivered, to try to maximize its reach. If you're on a smooth road, that's fine. But if you're driving over bumps, your beam will be bouncing up and down, and the on-coming driver will see very rapid transitions of light and dark, which is more disruptive than a constant bright or constant dark view. This is one reason some Porsches come with headlights that actually track the suspension.

Other benefits of HID are lower power consumption and longer life. The only other draw back with them is that they do take about a minute to reach full operating condition; brightness and color temperature. (And the cost, of course.)

Some day, they will all be replaced by LEDs.

 

The problem with HIDs is their poor color rendering. If you look at the spectrum of a halogen, you see that in varying amounts, it produces adequate amounts of all colors of light. HIDs produce intense amounts of specific frequencies. This means your ability to distinguish certain colors can be impaired, much as how early compact fluorescent lights were often inadequate to distinguish warm tones. This is why halogens, not HIDs are used as construction and general illumination and other situations where you actually need to be able to see. LEDs are worse for color rendering, though there is more promise in LED technology. HIDs are are dependant on the gases through which the arc passes for their color output, and sorry to say it, but there are limitations.

I'm not saying HIDs can't be good, but when your vehicle already has a halogen system, which is not being used to its full potential, why go through the expense of converting it to a light source that, at the end of the day, doesn't help you see any better.

To do a proper HID conversion, you need a suitable bulb, I would agree, a lower kelvin rated bulb would be better, a 4300K is not to bad.. Next you need a projector, and lets face it, I am not aware of any road legal projectors that would look good on an Aerostar. Between the cost of the wiring, bulbs and projector, and the fabrication that would be needed to both make it safe and make it look good, you could have had a very nice halogen system.

You can spend several hundred, maybe even a thousand dollars on an HID setup that would be safe and at least pretend to be legal. Or you could spend $45 on a relay harness set, another $45 on a good polishing kit with a polycarbonate compatible clearcoat, and $26 on a pair of Xtravision bulbs. And you can install the bulbs and harness in under a half hour, and you get to keep your high beams (many HID kits don't give you high beams.) This is what I run, an I have seen first hand, my headlights shine father down the road than a BMW X5 does. I can see road markers a mile away light up from my headlights. When I can get excellent headlights so cheaply, why would I mess with HIDs with all their inherent problems?

Lower power consumption is not a big deal for me, you use the harness to carry the load, and my alternator has plenty of output. The only benefit to the lower power consumption is if you want to run the headlights with the engine off. And the delay in their warm up time, thats not a huge problem, unless you want to switch to brights and you need to wait for them to warm up. Assuming you even have brights.

 

Well, there are D2R bulbs for reflector lamps, but anyway projector lamps shine with less glare.

I did HID conversion with 90 mm Hella in my Bumper, you see on picture. No glare, bright light. Yep, 4300K bulbs are better! I use them!

Now I do HID convertion on my Taurus.





For high beam I use H7 bulb in Hella 90mm reflector. I tried to use HID high beam, but belive me, no reason.

This is the real Headlamp upgrade. No glare, bright light, all is made by ECE ore DOT standards

 

I installed the HID in my Mustang using an H4 200 mm rectangular housing. Again, this type of housing is only DOT approved for motorcycle use. You don't need projection housings to use HID bulbs; there are plenty of cars that use HIDs and standard parabolic back reflectors. In fact, I was amazed at how inefficient a projection housing was; most of them only have that back reflector, and lose a lot of light off to the sides of the housing.

Mine was one of the earlier high quality kits that uses Osram's ballasts, and it cost almost $700 about 10 years ago. (I see a lot of crappy kits today, and I would definitely avoid them.) It uses a real D2R bulb with an H4 conversion mounting bracket that puts the arc at the same position as the H4 low beam filament. Because the shape of the arc is not the same as the filament, the light pattern is not exactly the same, but it works. Of course, as you said, this light did not offer a high beam, so I had to install something else for that.

Once the 4300K bulb warms up, its color spectrum is very close to a 50 watt H4 low beam; we checked them with a special instrument in one of our labs. While the filament has the standard black body distribution centered at around 3000K, the HID has a more even distribution with a few peaks spread across the spectrum; closer to "white". The additional higher frequencies are (mostly) visibly balanced out by the additional lower frequencies. Unfortunately, we had no instruments to measure color rendition index, so I can't speak to that. It does appear whiter, and definitely brighter.

I installed the E4 spec 200mm H4 lights into my Aerostar. Aside from the relay and wiring harness, it was just a drop-in, and definitely improved night time visibility over the stock lights. It was even an improvement over the Xtravision lights I had before, though not as much.

Pablo, were those housing adapted from something else, or were they made for the Taurus?

 

Look! D2R - is just a compromise. They tried to follow ECE ore DOT reuirements with reflector! Anyway they got better light but the problem of glare blinding was not solved. D2R is like a D2S but with shields, that wont working well! So all the conversion kits are just a compromise. More filling light and less drawing light.

D1S, D2S, D3S and D4s are for projectors with condencer lence. With shield in focus well ajusted lamps are not dangerouse for oncoming drivers becouse glare effect is minimal. Usually projectors have ajustable shield inside to be used in the USA ore EU. Shield position depend on market, but to change pattern you need to take lamp apart.


My housing are from wreked yard, low beam from BMW, high beam - very popular 90 mm hella projector. Glass lences are made for me in workshop. about $200 project, becouse I got used BMW headlamps.

 

What I am actually interested in is using an eCode headlight. It would of course mean converting the sealed beams over, but an Ecode headlight uses a much better and safer beam pattern than DOT. The biggest problem with DOT headlights is that they have some light going above the cutoff to illuminate overhead signs, and this light makes it impossible to have a brighter headlight without increasing glare. Ecode does not shine any light upwards, which puts more light on the road and reduces glare.

I'm not interested in converting to HID, I think HID technology has a long ways to go. But a good halogen ecode headlamp would be worlds better than what we have now. Does anyone sell the older headlight brackets so that a sealed glass headlight can be installed in place of the polycarbonate one? If I can get the brackets, I know where to get the ecode lamps.

I have been doing research into this, and it just turns out that the Europeans are way ahead of us in beam pattern technology. Our DOT standards are way out of line, and maximize glare just so that they don't have to illuminate overhead signs. I think that is wrong and really a form of theft. We pay our government to design our roads and safety standards, and they cheap out and decide not to put lights on overhead signs, and instead decide that we should buy our own. That would be like the grocery store REQUIRING you to bring your own bags.

However, I do stand behind my previous statements, I thing switching to the older style H4 DOT beam pattern is a downgrade in terms of the beam pattern, the polycarbonate pattern is better if you can keep the lens from fading. If you are gonna switch to a glass headlamp, switch to eCode.

 

Somebody on this forum described his conversion from the 92-up flush mount lights to the older sealed beam lights. I looked at both at the junk yard before, and I think if you just got all the bits and pieces from the earlier van, you can easily make the conversion on the later van.

And you know the man who sells the Ecode 200 mm rectangular sealed beams; Daniel Stern. Of course, they have their problems too. The Ecode lamps have a pattern that rises to the right (for those of us driving on the right side of the road) to better illuminate signs on the side of the road. This is fine, unless you're driving in the left lane and there is someone ahead of you in the right lane. He will get hit by that up-slope pattern.

 

Actually thats not a problem, because DOT headlights do the same thing.

 

I am going to test out the new Sylvania Headlight Restoration kit. They do apply a new clearcoat and offer a lifetime warranty, so I think I should test the kit, let you know how good a job it really does, and report back.

The nice thing about this kit is its affordability, while most restoration kits that I have seen either lack the clearcoat restoration (waste of money in the long run) or have too much and too expensive of a clearcoat, fine if you have several vehicles and are looking to start your own headlight restoration business. Others are not kits at all, and basically are large amounts of clearcoat, probably enough to treat a dozen or more cars, and would only be useful to fleet owners, businesses, and those who already have the tools and experience, and wish to invite a few friends over for a barbeque and headlight polishing.

 

So I have not tried the Sylvania restoration kit on an Aerostar yet, but I have used in on my newly acquired Focus, and my sisters Mazda 3. This kit is impressive in how well it works. The difference it makes in the headlights output is noticeable too. I would highly recommend this kit. Not only is it easy to use, effective, and permanent (according to numerous independent claims), but it also costs less than the 3M kit which is not effective or permanent.

 

That would be Torsen Rick. I also converted my '93 to sealed beam.

 

What about old school guys like me?

I've heard Cibie "E-code" housings paired to 9003 bulbs are the best for increasing vision, would love to hear opinions on this 'upgrade' from 6054s.